On every trip to Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, you need to plan to be at the Refuge, or at least at the ponds along the road in, before dawn. The Snow Geese and Sandhill Cranes rising for the day is one of the classic sights of the Bosque. It is seldom, during November and December, that a dawn does not find the pond dikes lined with photographers, many of them with their huge 600mm lenses and cameras on tripods. The spectical is the same, no matter how you attempt to catch it. This dawn, I happened on a friend, who was part of a photo-workshop, which, itself, was part of the Festival of the Cranes. They had been assigned to try to capture the blurred motion of the Geese as they came up off the water, so I decided to try as well. Actually, in the low light of an overcast dawn, blurred motion was making virtue of necessity…this shot is at ISO 1600, and that was still not fast enough to freeze the beating wings. I like the effect.

Processing for HDR in Snapseed brought a richness to the background colors that would not have been otherwise possible, and almost turns the image to tapestry. Canon SX50HS in Sports Mode. 1200mm equivalent field of view. 1/60th @ f6.5.